Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Negotiating with Terrorists: Sony Scraps The Interview

James Franco and the movie's Kim Jong-un

This movie, frankly, looks stupid. Harmless. Like any of a dozen other Seth Rogan, Judd Apatow-esque movies, destined to run on Comedy Central in perpetuity. It is also hardly the first time North Korea has been directly lampooned in Western media (Team America: World Police comes immediately to mind, as well as 30 Rock). So, why--even if the subject of the assassination of Kim Jong-un sounds dire--would such a fluff of a movie even register beyond a chuckle? I know Jong-un has a reputation as a complete nutbar, but this kind of puts him in "Dandy" from American Horror Story: Freak Show territory, doesn't it? A spoiled rotten sociopath with a dramatically out-of-scale reaction to a perceived slight. I guess that actually sounds about right.

Still, I'm a bit disheartened that it appears to have worked. Sony looks to be dumping the movie entirely. It can't be a great loss. But it's going to become a black market, highly sought-after item, and it is bound to get out. Once an unofficial version does get out (it will) there will be no stopping its distribution. It will very likely attract more viewers than it could have ever hoped to, had this whole flap never happened.